The chairman of the Democratic National Committee said the idea of replacing President Joe Biden as the party’s candidate and winning the election in November is “certifiably crazy actually.”
DNC Chair Jaime Harrison made the comment in a late-night reply Monday on X to a Biden-supporting poster who said it’s “insane and frankly stupid” to think the party would “usurp the nomination” from Biden and choose a replacement behind closed doors, especially one who’s not current-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Calls for Biden to remove himself from the 2024 presidential race have risen in recent weeks following US special counsel Robert Hur’s report saying he shouldn’t be charged for crimes related to mishandled confidential documents, specifically citing his old age and poor memory.
Nevertheless, Super Tuesday, where roughly a third of the nation’s Democratic delegates will be doled out, is fast approaching. Biden and his campaign have not indicated he’ll drop out of the race anytime soon, meaning he could amass a majority of the delegates in due time and become the party’s presumptive nominee.
If Biden then chooses to step away from the election — or if the Democratic Party decides it wants to put someone else onto the ballot — the party’s running out of feasible replacement options.
Should Biden leave the race when he’s already built up a sizable delegate lead, the 2024 Democratic National Convention would then become “contested,” meaning no active candidate won a majority of the delegates. In that scenario, the delegates previously bound to support Biden could change their votes to a different candidate.
That hasn’t happened, though, since Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson said he wouldn’t run for reelection in 1968 after winning the New Hampshire primary in late March of that year.
The 1968 contested convention was chaotic — even dangerous at times — and the Democratic candidate chosen, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, lost in November by 110 electoral votes.
A recent poll from Emerson College in mid-February revealed Biden trailing Trump in support by 2 percentage points. When presented with alternative possible Democratic candidates against Trump, however, all but Vice President Kamala Harris trailed the former president by double digits.
